The $6 Solution

Getting needy students with great grades to apply to elite colleges won’t fix higher education. So why is everyone talking about it?

Mark Wilson, Getty Images

Troy Simon, a student at Bard College who was homeless as a child, is greeted by President Obama at a White House summit on college access in January.

By Beckie Supiano

A White House summit on college
opportunity in January featured more than one Cinderella story. A
young man named Troy Simon told the invited group of educators and
advocates how he lived for a year in an abandoned building in New
Orleans and did not learn to read until he was 14, but made his way
to Bard College, where he was a sophomore studying American
literature. He introduced Michelle Obama, whose journey from her
modest Chicago neighborhood to Princeton